


Off Day

by silver_skins



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Anna (mentioned) - Freeform, Young Anna (Mentioned), elsa trying to control her powers, part of a bigger story that i havent posted, small angst, young elsa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21777511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_skins/pseuds/silver_skins
Summary: It's been a few weeks since the Accident, and Jack's been helping Elsa with control.Today is Anna's birthday. Elsa can't stay focused.
Relationships: Elsa (Disney) & Jack Frost (Guardians of Childhood)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Off Day

**Author's Note:**

> Looking for a beta reader!
> 
> This is just a slightly edited chapter from a bigger fic I'm working on, and I'm trying a slightly different style. Honestly, it's pretty self-indulgent. Cool. Enjoy!

“One more time.” 

Elsa frowns, adjusting her grip on the wood. It still feels unsteady; the staff is too large and frustratingly awkward in her hands, and the wood has been scratching her palms for what must be an eternity. The slivers left over in her skin are getting harder to hide, and they prick uncomfortably under too-tight gloves during the daytime. Or perhaps—and her stomach churns at the thought—it is not the splinters that make her hands feel like there are hundreds of needles beneath her skin.

But the gloves are important, her father says. They’ll prevent any more _Accidents_. And that, more than anything, is enough to convince Elsa to keep them on.

Elsa bites her lip in concentration. The lessons over the past few weeks have improved her control, and though Jack is doing his best, her magic is still too stubborn to respond his staff—though she can’t blame it, really. It is not as if she is _not_ trying, just that with every try she is more and more convinced it will never respond to her. Try after try after try. Elsa lets out a small huff. And...today is Anna’s birthday. 

_Today, is Anna’s birthday._

She lowers her arm. “I don’t think it’s working,” she says, shrugging, and turns to Jack. “Maybe it just doesn’t like me.”

“Try again.” Jack takes the staff gently from her, and she watches him float upwards freely. _Like it is easy._ “It’s only the third or fourth day. Keep practicing, soon you’ll feel connected. Maybe...” He cocks his head. “If you shut your eyes?” 

Elsa studies the staff. She really does not feel any sort of connection with it, other than maybe mutual annoyance. 

But Jack looks so hopeful, so she lets her eyes close and reaches out. The weight of the staff in her hands is uncomfortably heavy, but she scrunches up her face and reaches deep for her magic. _Control it. Just take a little bit for now_ , she thinks, _Nothing will happen if it’s just a little bit._

It is not hard. The tingling sensation in her chest comes like a tidal wave, but today she does not need so much magic. Elsa tries to relax her shoulders, and focuses on sending the buzzing rush into her hands ( _up and through, the way Jack had said)_ , but it is only when the magic starts running down her back that she really begins concentrating it outward. To her satisfaction, it pools in her gut, and she yanks it forwards, but it catches in her ribs, catches hard, stuck like a fly in a web. Elsa tries condensing it back down, but it tugs, and it writhes and it starts building and building and spinning in her chest (There’s too much of it there, so much that it’s almost suffocating).

But there’s something—familiar—terrifying—

Elsa gasps and lets go of the staff just in time for blue light to explode from her hands, flying straight towards the silk purple curtains. She does not even need to look to know that there are clear crystals erupting along the tapered ends of the fabric, and for a moment neither hear anything but the sharp crackling of ice. 

Her heart is _pounding_. And her mouth is dry. 

And she is shaking.

They were just curtains. She will be fine. She will be fine. 

Slowly, Jack picks up his staff and waves away the remnants of her slip-up, but she cannot tear her eyes from the drapes. "No harm done," he says, and clears his throat. "My staff is just being strange today. Understand?"

“Perhaps,” Elsa says weakly, barely above a whisper, “it is having an off day.”

 _Today_ _is Anna’s birthday_. 

He smiles. “You’ll get it.” 

But her fingers still tremble and blood roars through her ears by the time the lesson is over.

**Author's Note:**

> Looking for a beta reader!
> 
> Yeah, so comment and kudos and stuff. Thanks!
> 
> (Also, if it's not clear, when Elsa thinks 'She will be fine', the 'she' is Anna.)


End file.
